Link state routing is widely used to send and receive information packets from node to node in an electronic network. In link state routing, every node receives a map of the entire network topology. Thus, every node knows the configuration and location of every other node in the network. However, with the advent of mobile wireless and ad-hoc networks and their continuously varying and dynamic topology of nodes, significant difficulties arise when routing information packets. The continuous changes in load, bandwidth, network configuration and types of information being sent, requires more and more network resources to update this information, resulting in an unacceptable increase in overhead to the network.
There have been some attempts to improve routing protocol messaging including optimized link state routing (“OLSR”), in which a special subset of nodes and links may be used to relay routing information advertisements.
However, none of these methods effectively reduce network overhead in a dynamic topology. Thus, there remains a need for a method of reducing the overhead related to managing and updating changes in the network. In addition, current routing systems do not consolidate routing information, resulting in inefficient route selection computations based on narrow views of the system. Thus, there remains a need to consolidate routing information to enable more centralized route computation based on a wider view of the system. There is also a need for flexible and dynamic configuration for a routing method that enables the system to adapt to the changing network behavior. There also exists a need for a routing system that offers quality of service routing and route reservation support in order to meet the demands of multimedia traffic.